Two Dissertations · §65 · John Davenant

Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Elect Obj. 1 Solut: Relative names change with the creature, not God

That God is reconciliable to this or that elect person before that person’s faith and repentance, and is actually reconciled to the same person after faith and repentance, no more proves a change in God from act to potency than this does: that a human being is not justified at all until he believes, and is actually justified by God after he believes. Nor does it prove a temporal change of the divine essence or will from potency to act that someone’s sins are remissible and, after repentance, are actually remitted by God. No one will rightly say that because Paul is now justified as a believer in Christ—though he was not justified at all while he blasphemed against Christ—God himself undergoes some change. So neither does it follow from saying that a person is now reconciliable to God and now actually reconciled. To be justified and to be reconciled to God are either plainly the same, or at least inseparably joined.

To clear the scruple more openly, this must be known: although nothing absolute can newly arrive to God without a change in him, yet countless relative names can newly be predicated of God—at one time, and not at another—according to differences of time, while the divine essence and will remain without any shadow of change. What is affirmed of God in a mutable and temporal way is not affirmed because some change has come upon God, but because a change has come upon the creature. For example, one could truly say “Adam is creatable by God” when one could not yet truly say “Adam is created by God.” By the same measure, one could say before Adam’s actual repentance, “Adam is justificable by God,” or “Adam is reconciliable to God”; but one could not say, “Adam is actually justified and reconciled to God.” Even so we do not put acts and potencies in God, or any mutability at all. These things are said of God in different ways not by a change of God in himself, but by a change of the creature that comes from him.

Latin

Deum esse reconciliabilem huic aut illi electo ante fidem & paenitentiam ejus, & esse actu reconciliatum eidem post fidem & paenitentiam ejusdem, non magis arguit in Deo mutationem ab actu ad potentiam, quam hunc hominem minime esse justificatum donec credat, & esse actu a Deo justificatum postquam credat, arguat eandem in Deo mutabilitatem; aut hujus peccata esse remissibilia, & esse post paenitentiam actu a Deo remissa, probet essentiae aut voluntatis Divinae mutationem temporalem a potentia ad actum. Nemo autem recte dixerit, ex eo quod Paulus nunc justificatus est in Christum credens, qui minime fuit justificatus dum fuit in Christum blasphemus, Deum ipsum subire aliquam mutationem; ergo neque ex eo quod modo reconciliabilis Deo, modo actu reconciliatus statuitur: cum esse justificatum, & esse Deo reconciliatum, aut plane eadem sunt, aut saltem inseparabiliter connexa. Sed ut hunc scrupulum magis aperte eximamus, sciendum est, Utcunque nullum absolutum potest de novo advenire Deo sine ejus mutatione, tamen infinitas relativas denominationes posse de novo, & secundum differentiam temporis de Deo aliquando praedicari, aliquando non praedicari, Divina essentia & voluntate interea manente absque omni umbra mutationis. Quae enim mutabiliter & temporaliter de Deo affirmantur, non sic affirmantur propter mutationem aliquam Deo advenientem, sed secundum mutationem creaturae advenientem. Verbi causa, Adamus est a Deo creabilis vere dici potuit, quando vere dici non potuit, Adamus est a Deo creatus. Pari ratione, Adamus est a Deo justificabilis, vel Adamus est Deo reconciliabilis, potuit dici ante paenitentiam ejus actualem; at Adamus est actu justificatus & Deo reconciliatus, non potuit. Neque tamen in Deo ponimus actus & potentias, aut mutabilitatem qualemcunque; quia haec praedicantur de Deo diversimode, non per mutationem sui in seipso, sed per mutationem creaturae quae est ab ipso.

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John Davenant argues from Scripture that Christ's death is a remedy offered to every person, so that anyone who hears the Gospel may be called to believe, and then opens a second dissertation on predestination.

John Davenant (1572–1641) was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, bishop of Salisbury from 1621, and England's leading delegate to the Synod of Dort. A Reformed theologian of the moderate school, he defended universal atonement language within a Calvinist frame.

The Two Dissertations (1650) press two theses: that Christ died sufficiently for all, and that God sincerely calls all who hear the gospel — against the novel claim that Christ died only for the elect in every sense. They are Davenant's mature statement of the hypothetical-universalist position that divided English Calvinists.

This volume covers the opening of the first dissertation through the close of chapter 3, with the theses on the extent of Christ's death.

Date1572–1641 AD (Bishop of Salisbury; 1650 Cambridge imprint)

The 1683 reprint was not used as base text. No modern English was copied.

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